Duvall Manor Apartments

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Duvall Manor was designed and built specifically to function as a multifamily residence of at least two and no more than four stories in height with no elevator. Although the type most often has a single main entrance, Duvall Manor presages later apartment design, instead reflecting garden-apartments with multiple entrances into stairwells, which would obviate the need for a single lobby. Duvall Manor is set back within a broad lawn, a treatment which distinguishes it from many contemporary apartment buildings. The wings frame an expansive garden with a single central tree and evergreen shrubs at each entrance.

Duvall Manor embodies the distinctive characteristics of the Colonial Revival style with its brick facades, rigid symmetry, pedimented door surrounds, keystone lintels, and belt courses. Like later walk-up apartments, each block of the large U-shaped building functions as an independent unit, containing six to eight apartments. Their staggered arrangement allows for an additional window in each unit, while also adding visual interest by breaking up what would be a long plane of brick wall. This plan also allowed for construction in stages as each section could be individually built.

The building was designed by Evan J. Conner and constructed in 1949 for owner A. Clyde Duvall. It followed on the heels of rapid apartment construction in the immediate Greenway area, spurred by wartime housing shortages. Made possible by streetcar connections and the construction of a new Pennsylvania Avenue bridge in 1939, the Greenway area was the site of several large federally supported apartments constructed during WWII. After the war, DC’s population continued to grow, with more apartments like Duvall Manor providing housing opportunities in accessible parts of the city.

DC Inventory: December 21, 2017
National Register: June 1, 2018